Global AIDS Crisis: A Reference Handbook

The book describes the programmes which seem particularly effective in dealing with HIB/AIDS and sets out to explain the disparities in their distribution. It documents and tries to understand both similarities as well as the variety of national approaches taken to cope with HIV/AIDS in a number of European countries. On the basis of the welfare-mix model, six country studies and an introductory chapter draw particular attention to the different mixes of public policies and private non-profit, community-based activities; the functional mixes between different types of services in the areas of prevention, care, research, control and monitoring, interest representation, fund-raising. The mixes between specialized, so-called "exclusive" HIV/AIDS service organizations and services made available by general, comprehensive, or so-called "inclusive" institutions which provide AIDS-specific programmes among other activities will also be elaborated. The whole range of HIV/AIDS activities, from professional services to self-help, is analysed in a comparative perspective.

The book is based on data from the European Centre / WHO Collaborative Study Managing AIDS. It is a comparative policy study focused on the role of non-profit organizations in public health and welfare policy, covering several thousands of organizations and HIV/AIDS programmes in six European countries.

Unexpected similarities and divergence in AIDS service organizations across Europe were found. The sheer multitude of programmes offered called a surprise to experts in the field, as did remaining conspicuous blank spots or deficiencies in services. Degrees of AIDS policy coherence, prevention efforts, service density and quality, self-help and professionalization, medicalization vs. social integration of HIV/AIDS programmes, sectoral specialization and institutionalization all vary tremendously, as do the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational responses to HIV/AIDS. Interestingly, variations in the supply of activities can hardly be explained by epidemiological patterns and corresponding demand and needs.

AIDS management requires long-term institutional strategies and information which cannot be provided by epidemiological or behavioural analysis alone. An effective struggle against HIV/AIDS also requires institution-building, inter-organizational development and policy-field analysis.

The careful analysis in this volume critically reviews key issues in the global response, including:

Providing a comprehensive but easy to read and compact overview of history, trends and impacts of HIV/AIDS and the global efforts to respond effectively this book is essential reading for all students of international relations, health studies and international organizations.

For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively. Héctor Tobar was the person they chose to hear, and now to tell, that story.

The result is a masterwork or narrative journalism—a riveting, at times shocking, emotionally textured account of a singular human event. A New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. In its stirring final chapters, it captures the profound way in which the lives of everyone involved in the disaster were forever changed.

Acclaimed as "extraordinary" (The New York Times) and "a classic" (Los Angeles Times), The Big Necessity is on its way to removing the taboo on bodily waste—something common to all and as natural as breathing. We prefer not to talk about it, but we should—even those of us who take care of our business in pristine, sanitary conditions. Disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, nearly two million people have no access to an indoor toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable.

Moving from the underground sewers of Paris, London, and New York (an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen) to an Indian slum where ten toilets are shared by 60,000 people, The Big Necessity breaks the silence, revealing everything that matters about how people do—and don't—deal with their own waste. With razor-sharp wit and crusading urgency, mixing levity with gravity, Rose George has turned the subject we like to avoid into a cause with the most serious of consequences.